


Scar Tissue [the Our Particles that Burn remix]

by blueabsinthe



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2015 NHL Off-Season, Character Study, Implied Prescription Drug Dependency, Introspection, M/M, Off-Season, Painkillers, Prescription Drug Use, References to Addiction, Remix, Tampa Bay Lightning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-20 19:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16144001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueabsinthe/pseuds/blueabsinthe
Summary: Fallin' all over myselfTo lick your heart and taste your health





	Scar Tissue [the Our Particles that Burn remix]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boltschick2612](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltschick2612/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Our Particles that Burn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454981) by [boltschick2612](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltschick2612/pseuds/boltschick2612). 



> So, I ended up starting something else for this remix challenge but ended up not being too fond of the idea. I also wasn't sure I would have been able to finish it by the deadline. Anyway, I started over again and this fic is the end result. 
> 
> Title and summary from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song of the same name.

He has his hand wrapped around the pill bottle, the impersonal plastic feels heavier than it should against his palm. Val turns away from the bathroom sink, flicking the light off as he turns to head back to bed. 

Ben is still asleep, the sheets riding low on his hips. Val can hear Ben’s breathing - steady and rhythmic - from where he is standing. He leans against the door, arms folded across his bare chest, and just stares at Ben’s sleeping form. Val finds he is bereft of speech as he watches Ben roll onto his side, eyes following the curve of his spine, watching how the sheet dips below his tailbone. 

Val watches as the dying rays of sunlight stream through Ben’s window. The rays surround Ben’s slumbering form, filtering through the dark strands of his hair and across his pale skin. It’s a collision of colour and light, and it reminds Val of emerging from the tunnel at Amalie. Thunderous applause, lights, and the sweet sound of skate blades hitting the ice. It’s almost poetic. It’s a high he doesn’t think will ever grow old. 

He wants to stay in his current spot and just watch the way the sun warms Ben’s form. Wants to imagine his hands tracing every line and curve of Ben’s spine, committing to memory each vertebra, each space between his ribcage. Val wants to map Ben’s body with his fingertips, run his fingers over the bruises and scars crisscrossing Ben’s body like lines on a map only Val could read. He knows Ben’s body almost as intimately as his own. Knows where every bruise, every scar, every place his nails have sunk into, leaving tiny half-moon marks behind.

The way his heart skips every time he thinks about Ben used to terrify him. The first time they were together, he was so sure Ben could feel his heart as it pounded in his chest. Val spent hours afterward tracing Ben’s jawline with his fingertip. He touched the hollow at the base of Ben’s throat - the suprasternal notch - feeling the way Ben’s breath hitched. As Val studied the pinkish-red colour at the base of Ben’s fingernails, he realized he’d never felt so utterly consumed by one person in his entire life. Had never imagined he would be so captivated by one individual. How one person could take up so much room in a person’s heart still felt like the most asinine thing imaginable. 

He keeps thinking everything between him and Ben will end just as quickly as it started. How what they have is just like the past season. Only guaranteed up to eighty-two games, everything else is background noise. It’s a fleeting thought, but it still keeps him awake at night. When he’s not thinking about Ben, he finds he thinks about the postseason. It feels like it ended ages ago, but it had only been a couple weeks. The bruises - both physical and mental - are still raw. 

So close and yet so far all at the same time. They came so far, only to have it all slip through their fingers. Val knows Steven blames himself, saying he wasn’t enough. Tyler’s broken wrist shouldn’t have stopped him. He’s heard it all. It rings in his head like a steady drumbeat. Val knows Ben shoulders most of the blame. How he wasn’t enough, how he should have pushed himself more. Ben wanted to win Val another Cup ring. The promise seems so long ago now. 

Val remembers when he found the pills the first time. ‘Doctor prescribed’, Ben said, and then he laughed like it was the funniest joke he’d heard in a long time. 

“Just remember to pace yourself, pet,” Val had said, before setting the bottle into the medicine cabinet.

Losing the Cup took everything from Ben. Val’s watched as Ben tips the bottle of pills against his palm, the white discs falling against the fleshy part of his palm before Ben brings his hand up to swallow them. Val’s careful to watch the contents of the bottle, his mind conjuring up images of the bottle emptying, with another one taking its place soon after. He half-wonders if the pills help Ben with both his mental and physical pain. He knows what painkillers can do to a person, seeing more than one player taking them for some kind of damaging injury. Val knows how easy it is to become dependant on them, the long spiral into addiction not far behind.

He wonders if Ben feels the numbness creep into his body. If it’s like a kiss of life to him. For a few hours nothing hurts, everything is alive. Even the small twinges of pain don’t matter, because, for a few hours, the blissful suspension between a chemical induced haze and reality is one and the same. 

Val wishes he could change everything. He wants a do-over. He knows Ben’s wished for the same thing. He’s heard Ben when he talks in his sleep. He speaks in monosyllables, the painkiller-induced haze hanging over his head like a cloud. Ben mumbles over and over about what could have been, what might have been. 

He watches as Ben curls in on himself, shutting out the world. And, Val wonders if compartmentalizing is the only way Ben can deal with his disappointment of losing the Cup. It sometimes scares him that he isn’t privy to Ben’s darker thoughts. Val wonders if Ben’s thought about how many times a prescription needs to be refilled before it becomes an unhealthy dependency. Maybe he’s thought about where he will be at the start of next season. Or maybe he is so far removed from everything, the only thing he can remember is to swallow another pill. 

Val knows some of the dark thoughts plaguing Ben on most nights. He knows Ben feels like the clock on his career is ticking. Ben’s told him countless times about the trade that brought him to the Lightning in the first place. Promising, young player in exchange for him. Contracts aren’t permanent. Trades can always happen. It’s the nature of the business.

Ben always brushes the thought off almost as quickly as it occurs, doing his best to laugh it off with Val. It’s an overreaction. A fleeting thought induced by the pills and disappointment.

Val’s shaken from his reverie by the muffled sounds of Ben from the bed. He watches as Ben rolls over, hand reaching across the empty space like he’s trying to reach across time and space for some tangible piece of something - anything - that matters. Val can see the way Ben’s hand trembles against the sheets. 

“Tired … so, so tired,” Ben mumbles, rolling onto his side again, his back to Val.

Val pads over to the bed softly and slips underneath the covers. He pretends to sleep, eyes closed, listening to Ben’s breathing. He can feel the heat of Ben’s body next to him, and it’s so achingly familiar it makes his chest hurt. He sighs and breathes in the scent of soap and shampoo surrounding him like a cocoon. 

“Val?” Ben whispers to the room.

Val rolls onto his side, facing Ben on the bed, and he wants to touch Ben’s cheek and let the words pour out of him like a damn bursting. _You’re so close and yet so far away. Losing the Cup was not your fault. You’re not going anywhere. And it kills me that you don’t even know it._

Instead, Val shifts his body closer, feeling the warmth radiating off Ben’s skin in waves. “Cold,” he mumbles, feigning sleepiness. 

He can hear Ben stifle a laugh. “I can tell.”

As Ben moves closer to him, his shins bumping against Val’s toes, Val realizes he still has his fist curled around Ben's pill bottle. “Hold me?” he mumbles, letting his hand dangle over the edge of the bed.

Val feels Ben's hand on his hip and his voice in the dark whispering, “Always.”

He lets the bottle of pills fall to the floor.


End file.
